PAPER x CRANES
by akikue
Summary: Kaitou and Gakuto find themselves mixed up in a dangerous city game, pitting the two childhood friends against one another in a battle of more than wills. KAITOxGackupo
1. Presently

Warning, the following contains;;

- homosexuality

- KAITO x Gakupo

read at your own discretion

**PAPER x CRANES I**

**Presently**

Slender hands reached over the mass on the bed next to him. They trailed over to the alarm clock's glowing digital display. 4 am. He clasped a hand to his forehead and swept his purple bangs away from his face. Gakuto laid back down on the bed and closed his eyes. So much for a job quickly done. He had to go all the way last night. Rolling the other man over onto his back, the other's face was graced with the peace of sleep. His tan face had stubble from a few days growth and around his immense neck was what Gakuto was after. Pale fingers glowing in the twilight of the bedroom, he searched for the claw to unhook the thin golden chain. Pulling it up slowly as to not lose the pendant, he quickly slung his thin legs over the side of the bed and slipped out.

Gakuto hobbled out of the room, buttoning his dark washed jeans under his dress shirt. He put the necklace around his own neck and turned to look back at the lump in the bed. It was such a waste to leave such an extravagant life, even if it was for only an evening. Smiling softly, he pulled out a gun and pulled back the hammer. "How naive some people can be."

x x x

Shion sat in his car in the parking garage opposite the towering skyscraper. It was hard to believe that some people actually liked to live that far up. He rested his gloved hand on his leg and checked his cell phone with the other. 4.25. What was he doing taking so long? He knew Gakuto to be a very thorough person, but not one to take his sweet time. And what was wrong at the party? The other man had left without letting him know that he was going with their target. "How stupid." Kaitou said to himself, pulling his cigarette away from his lips. Morning was soon going to start in the city and he couldn't risk sitting out here in this damn parking garage waiting for Gakuto to show his face.

Finally, at 4.45, the familiar feminine face walked out of the atrium doors. Kaitou started up the car and backed out, coasting down to a stop in front of the other man. He rolled down the passenger window and looked up at Gakuto with shadowed eyes. "What took you so long?" Gakuto just pulled open the passenger side door and slid in onto the leather interior. The taller male kept staring at him for a while longer, then shifted the car to drive and pulled away from the curb.

x x x

The black Citroen Metisse stopped in front of the office building. It towered stories above the surrounding buildings, a black mirror against the new morning sky.

"Thanks for the pick up, Shion," Gakuto said turning away from the other man to step out of the car. Kaitou grabbed his shoulder through a curtain of deep purple hair. Gakuto looked over his shoulder and stared blankly with blue eyes at Kaitou's pained expression.

"What happened last night, Gakuto?" he asked looking ahead at the other cars now appearing on the road. Gakuto sighed and closed the door again. He sighed and ran his hand through his still messy hair.

"I'll have to tie it back up again before I go in to see the boss," he chuckled to himself. Kaitou just turned to look back at him again.

"Stop ignoring my question," he said, this time with more force. He turned the purple haired man's face to look at him. "Do you think my concern is a joke?" he asked desperately. "I didn't even know you'd be taking out Tenshii until the day of the mission!" he shook the other man with both hands, the sound of traffic growing outside of his door. "Do you think I'm a joke?"

Gakuto stared at him blankly still, then turned away, taking Kaitou's hands off his white dress shirt. "Shion, your concern is none of mine, nor is it the company's," he replied, opening his door and standing up outside the car. Looking down at the blue haired man, he continued in a washed out and dull voice. "You're so naive sometimes." He turned away and began to stride towards the looming skyscraper.

Kaitou got out of the car and followed him to the building, loafers thudding against the flagstone.

"So, are you saying that I shouldn't be worried then, Gakuto!" he shouted after the other man. Gakuto looked back at him, cascade of purple hair catching the morning breeze.

"I'm not saying that. I'm just saying that what you're worried about is none of your business anymore," he turned back to the building and pulled his long hair back from his face except for his bangs. Kaitou ran up behind him and hugged the much smaller man.

"Why did this happen to us, Gakuto?"

With a dazed look on his face, he placed a hand on top of one of Shion's. The other man was still so much bigger than he was.

"It's just the way things turned out."

Gakuto pulled away from him and reached for the door's metallic handle. Kaitou stood there at a lost, then looked down at his empty arms. He clenched his fist and bit his lip.

"I just wonder if... we could have done anything... different."

Gakuto paused, bewilderment caught on his face for a moment. He looked down and he resumed his blank stare. How could they have done anything different? They followed the only path they had, chasing their dreams in anyway they could. They ran blindly, and now that he had made it...

_"No fair Kaitou, you're always better than me..."_

"That's just the way things are now."


	2. Ignorance

**PAPER x CRANES II**

**Ignorance**

Kaitou sat uncomfortably at the desk and looked around. It was awkward, having an office, especially after having all of that field time. He sighed and decided to consider himself lucky to have struck it this big with only 8 years of 'service' under his belt.

By 'service', it meant anything from baby-siting for a night to helping out with big-time police investigations, sometimes even against the police themselves. Who ever paid the most had the pleasure of using all of KARD's resources, even pretending to agree to work for the other side to gain information.

And now, at the young age of 26, Shion Kaitou was now the youngest KARDs Dealer of the time.

He stretched his fingers in the white silk gloves. It felt different from the leather ones they wore on the job, but he wasn't allowed to get his hands 'dirty' anymore. That was a job for the others, not him. He looked down at his own hand as if it couldn't possibly be his. His office door opened and he glanced up.

Purple hair pulled back into a high ponytail, Gakuto stood, framed in the doorway, suite jacket crooked. He stood there, looking from the desk, to the walls, then to the man sitting behind the desk. A bitter smile crossed his face as he leaned against the metal door frame. "Congrats on the promotion." Gakuto ran a gloved hand along the trimming on the door frame, watching as the soft leather caught on one of the screws. He pulled his hand loose and focused his blue eyed glare at Kaitou.

"So, Shion. Where you really so busy trying to watch out for me that you forgot to mention your new office, or perhaps your new place of residence?" he asked, holding up a key on a loop. "Queen sent me here to give these to you, they're for your new apartment," he spat, tossing the keys at the blue haired. "Must be so hard, kissing up to the boss like that," Gakuto said, turning to leave the office.

Kaitou caught the keys and stood up. "You never give me the time to tell you anything anymore, so, stop blaming me!" He reached forward for the other man's arm, but Gakuto pulled his shoulder away and turned to face him with anger burning in the tears that ran down his face.

"And just why the hell do you think I'd iwant/i to give you the fucking time of day!" he shouted, shoving the much larger man back. "Why? So I can hear how brilliant you've been! How you get a raise every other fucking week!" His purple bangs fell wildly over his face, blue eyes burning behind them. "So I could hear another story about how you saved that damn Kagamine, or how you finally took down some good for fuck gang boss!" Gackuto straitened up and pushed his bangs from his face, closing his eyes, as if trying to regain his composure. But, when he opened them back up, although his face had returned to normal, his eyes churned with hatred and welled with sorrow. "Whatever. No matter what the hell happens to you, good or bad, is none of my concern," he said in a deflated voice. "Sorry for giving you a hard time, Sir." He turned to the other man but didn't look at his face, then turned out of the room.

The blue haired man stood beside his desk, looking down at his gloved hands. He didn't dare look up when the door paused for a long time before closing. The other man's footsteps slowly faded down the hallway. iAre these gloves even worth it?/i He wondered to himself. Was this life even worth it? To be on top of the city, to rise up to become the new King, only to sit on the throne alone? Kaitou wondered if he had spent too much time analyzing things, working his life out logically, basing his calculations on what he believed to be fact.

He spent the rest of the day with a gloved hand pressed to his office window, looking past his pale reflection to the skyscrapers below.

x x x

As evening came, Kaitou found himself sitting in the chair opposite Queen. The desk between them was covered with different case files and files of the KARD's most successful for the jobs. He picked up one that "Chess" scrawled across the tab. Interested, he let the folder fall open onto the desk. There wasn't much in the folder. A few papers outlining some discrepancies between the "Chess" and KARD. Odd, KARD didn't usually deal with it's own business, preferring always to handle cases unrelated to them.

"So, what did Chess do?" he asked Queen. She sat back, her brunette hair sweeping across her brow. Red eyes gazed across the table at Kaitou thoughtfully. She flicked a few strands of hair behind her ear with red fingernails and leaned forward to talk to him quietly.

"Chess was never really all that big," she said, "They never really got in our way of business. Always sitting on the sidelines." She ran her hand through her short hair and sighed. "But, very recently, they've been acting up. They always seem to get our jobs done right before we release the information to the KARD in charge of the mission," She leaned back in her chair and placed her finger tips together, long nails clicking. "So, I think that it's about time KARD did some cleaning up of it's own self."

Kaitou stood and raised his hand in a salute to her, not unlike a military salute. "Queen, I would be more than honored if you would allow me to help you with your search." His cool blue eyes looked seriously across the table at the woman.

"Kaitou," she laughed, "you don't have to be so formal. You are one of my ACEs after all. Just all me 'Meiko', or 'Meiko-san' if you feel the need." She motioned for him to sit back down in the chair he had just left.

"So, Meiko-san, if you've known this, why haven't you told anyone?" Kaitou asked, still holding onto the Chess file.

"Well, I can't very well tell either Kagamines, they'd let everyone know before the checks, they're so naive. Hatsune's my secretary, she's too... loose to tell this to."

"So, I'm the first to know, then?" Kaitou asked in disbelief.

Meiko nodded and leaned back in her chair. "So, you know what I want you to do, right?" she asked in response to Kaitou's look. "I want you to tail anyone who works in information and processing, can you do that for me?"

He nodded. "Could I have a list of names as to not arouse suspicion?"

She opened up a desk drawer and flicked through the papers. "Here," she said finally pulling out a short list of the names. Kaitou looked down the short list. Kotari, he had worked with her before, she was nice. He doubted she could do it. Further down the list, however, where characters that Kaitou was too used to reading.

"Wh-when did Kamui get into informations?" He asked, looking up from the paper.

"Oh, a while ago, why do you ask?" Meiko said, not looking up from her new found stack of papers.

"That would mean that he wouldn't be working outside jobs anymore, right?" he asked in a carefully measured tone.

Meiko nodded. "That's right, his field ID was terminated almost seventeen months ago. He's been doing desk work ever since."


	3. Digression

**PAPER x CRANES IIIf**

**Digression**

Gakuto drummed his fingers on the mahogany desk, other hand propping up his head. The files sat neatly sorted on his desk. He pushed back up his thick-rimmed glasses with the hand he was leaning on and continued to trail after the black characters on the page of the novel. The only noise in the office was coming from the other employees of the department typing away or unlocking file cabinets, the shuffle of paper constant. Informations was dull work, but there was so much that they regularly had to recruit field agents to work there.

Most people who wanted to work at KARD thought only of the thrill of running around with a gun in shady alleyways. He laughed at their stupidity, watching many of them work simply as paper runners in the office, although he too had once had stupid dreams of that once too. He had much bigger dreams to focus on right now though, and in order to fulfil them, he had to patiently wait.

The man swept his purple bangs out of his face. The sky had long turned black, but the wall clock only read 6.30 pm. That's what winter did to the world. He stood up and stretched, yawning. He reached for his black blazer and pulled it on over his white dress shirt, fixing his tie over the buttons. The other employees took little notice of him, all of them ready to follow his example in the next couple half hours. Gakuto grabbed his keys from his desk drawer and locked them up. He pushed his chair in and packed his novel away into his computer bag. Lifting it on his shoulder, he looked at the head of department. "Clocking out, Suzuki-san," he said, lifting his hand in a good by salute. The elderly man nodded but didn't show any more interest than the other workers. With that, Gakuto made his way to the elevators and pressed the down button.

The mechanical whirring smoothed to silence as the elevator coasted to a stop. Kaitou looked up at the lighted dial. 16th floor, Informations. He just needed him to not have left the office yet, but he doubted that Gakuto would leave so early. The sheets of metal parted to reveal to him the very man he was interested in seeing. Gakuto looked at him in mild surprise. "I suppose you need to get off here, sir," the other man said, stepping aside and inclining his head to the older one. Kaitou narrowed his blue eyes at him.

"Actually, I'm just going down," he said coolly, stepping aside from the door to allow Gakuto to walk past him and into the elevator. The purple haired man slipped right past him and went to lean on the opposite wall.

Silence followed for the next few floors, the elevator announcing unwanted stops, one of them reaching for the close door button. Every few seconds, Kaitou glanced up at Gakuto who kept checking his watch. Every time he looked down to pull his sleeve back, Kaitou could feel something in his body jump at the beautiful, pale skin that peeked at him between brown leather and black cloth.

"Since when did you start working Informations?" Kaitou asked casually as they coasted on, uninterrupted for the next ten floors. Gakuto played as if he didn't hear the question, but the other man didn't want it to be dropped so easily. "Gaku, when did you-"

"I've been in Informations for almost 18 months now," he answered the blue-haired man without looking up at him.

"Then that would mean that your field licence was terminated after one month of your consent-"

"I know."

Gakuto looked at him and smiled as the elevator stopped on the ground floor. He pushed past Kaitou to get across the atrium to get to the glass doors. Kaitou reached out for him and pulled the purple haired man back into the elevator. Gakuto looked back at him, disinterested.

"To what do I owe your unexpected advances, Shion?" he asked dully, looking through overcast blue eyes.

Kaitou looked at him, his expression pained. If Gakuto knew what had happened, then how does that explain...

"What exactly are you doing?" he asked him, stepping out of the elevator after him. Gakuto looked at him blankly.

"If you could elaborate-" he began to say, looking at Kaitou, but the older man just pulled him across the atrium and through the glass doors.

x x x

Kaitou pulled Gakuto briskly behind him through the parking garage, weaving in and out of the parked cars. He finally came to his parking spot and took out his keys. Gakuto stood there, purple hair falling all over his face as the older man unlocked the door.

Kaitou shoved Gakuto into the passenger seat of his car and walked to the driver's side door. He pulled it open roughly and sat down on the leather seat. Gakuto looked at the older man in semi-amusement. "You know, I could have just gotten out if I really had wanted to," Gakuto said, stroking the door handle with slender fingers.

"The car or this life?" Kaitou asked him, looking over at the other male. Gakuto didn't turn to look at him, just kept looking at the stitching in the door's face.

"Both maybe," he finally replied.

"What are you really doing?" Kaitou asked him pleadingly. The purple haired man looked at him as if really seeing him for the first time.

"I'm not even too sure myself..."

Kaitou sighed and leaned his forehead on the steering wheel. He looked at his hand on his thigh and clenched his fingers.

"You're working for someone on the outside, aren't you?"

"...Perhaps."

"And you're not going to tell me, are you?"

"...Of course not."

"...Do you know how dang-"

Gakuto lifted a hand to his face and laughed, hiding his pale lipped smile.

"You think KARD is so dangerous..."

"Because we are!" Kaitou reached over for Gakuto's shoulder. "You could die, Gakuto!" He grabbed the man's other shoulder so that they would be facing each other. "I have to do something, Gaku!"

Kaitou let go of him, a thousand thoughts racing through his head at the same time. He knew who it was, and he had agreed to do the job, but still...

"Don't worry, I'm not the one working for Chess, if that's what you're worried about," Gakuto said, reaching for the door handle. Kaitou looked up at him, relieved and yet more concerned than before.

"Then who-"

Gakuto leaned over and pulled Kaitou in by the back of his head. The older man turned to him in surprise and found himself staring into brilliant blue eyes. Pale lips ran from Kaitou's own to the man's ear.

"I don't like working with other people, Shion."

Gakuto pulled away and smiled, running his hands through Kaitou's choppy blue hair, then getting up and out of the car. "_Ciao, Monsieur_," he said, winking and waving before disappearing amid the sea of parked cars.


	4. Proficiency

**PAPER x CRANES IV**

**Proficiency**

_Giiiiive meee a reeeeeeaaaaaaaaasoooon to trust my broken heaaaaaaart agaaaaaaaain~_

The lounge's lights were over cast by the cloud of casual cigarette smoke swirling over the scene. Kaitou sat haunched over at the joint's bar. The bartender stood there wiping a crystalline glass, looking so stereotypical with his arm bands and red vest. He had approached Kaitou when the man first walked up to the bar, suggesting everything with over 17% alcohol to fix his 'troubles'. A waved gloved hand quickly dismissed him. It was one of the many weird things about him, Kaitou didn't like drinking but he couldn't get through a day without lighting up at least four or five times. That was on good days.

Since Gakuto left him sitting in his car dumbfounded, he had consumed four and a half packs. To be fair, most of it was wasted, burning down to the butt before he could get one decent lung full. He really had tried to quit a few years back because Gakuto had kept complaining to him about it, but he stopped trying with the other man suddenly fell into his state of disinterest. He still wondered when he began to miss it. By it, he meant everything. When did Gakuto get such sex appeal? When did they start to grow apart? What was he doing if his field licence was terminated over a year ago? Kaitou had done plenty of dogging him whenever he caught word that Gakuto was doing something. He often found himself compromising events, like business meetings or party invitations.

Groaning in frustration at another wasted stick, Kaitou reached into his pocket and took out the crumpled box. He tapped another cig out and dug in his blazer pocket for his lighter.

_Ooonly tiiime can give meeee an answerrrr~_

Taking a long inhale of the tobacco, Kaitou felt his shoulders relax. He looked at his phone sitting on the marble bar top and picked it up, sliding the screen open, then closing it again. The number Gakuto had given him years go didn't work anymore. He had meant to get Gaku's number from him several times before, but they usually ended up parting ways on notes.

Kaitou pushed the cigarette butt into one of the overcrowded ash trays and picked up his phone. Time to put his new found power to use.

The lounge door smoothly slid open, blue hair toussled about in the burst of chilly wind. The doors slid closed and Kaitou walked on to his car, an ashy smell lingering in his wake, the singer's throaty notes scattering on the wind.

_Unleeessss yooou hooooooooold on too meeeeeeeee nooo__ooooo__oooow~_

x x x

Suzuki ran up the stairs, a hand clutching his chest. He blinked sweat from his eyes and continued up the concrete steps, echoing all the way down the stair well.

The metal door burst open to the cool autumn air. He stumbled out and started coughing, tired lungs rejecting the cold air. His brown hair was plastered to his face. Black eyes stared at the door in terror.

Slowly, the hinges creaked open. A slender hand covered in sleek, black leather came around the door.

"Suzuki-san, really, you think you can outsmart me?"

The voice sent shivers down the older man's spine, every syllable threatening to seduce him.

The leather clad man took stepped around the door, stiletto heels clicked on the cement rooftop, dark long hair billowing in the strong wind.

"I swear I don't know what you're taking about!" He wiped his brow, trembling in his tan business suit and looked at the other man. Lush, pale lips were curved up in a smile. Suzuki felt his mouth dry. "Who are you working for!" he shrieked, shrinking away from the masked assailant.

"I'm not like you, Suzuki-san," the heeled man said in his melodious voice, now viciously dense with sweet venom. He reached a gloved hand down and smoothed back Suzuki's damp hair from his face. The grown man shivered and felt a damp spot grow larger in his slacks. The man with the mask laughed and bent down closer to the man, cold gun metal resting on his sweaty brow.

"I don't like working with others."


End file.
